


Shakespeare Never Wrote a Vampire Play

by RosiePaw



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-26
Updated: 2010-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:53:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosiePaw/pseuds/RosiePaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is a sort of prequel to melagan's <a href="http://melagan.livejournal.com/142834.html"><i>Sensual Magic</i></a>.  However, it contains what may be appear to be an inconsistency in timing.  If this is going to bother you too much to enjoy the story, you may want to read the explanatory notes at the end first.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Shakespeare Never Wrote a Vampire Play

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sort of prequel to melagan's [_Sensual Magic_](http://melagan.livejournal.com/142834.html). However, it contains what may be appear to be an inconsistency in timing. If this is going to bother you too much to enjoy the story, you may want to read the explanatory notes at the end first.

Although Shakespeare wrote of ghosts and witches, fairies and monsters, none of his plays have vampires in them.  This omission did not occur to John until after he himself had been turned. 

Shakespeare had not yet come to London when John arrived there with the clothes on his back, the jewels his mother had left him in his pocket and a horse which it might be argued he had stolen.  Technically, it was his father’s horse, and although John had always had use of it, the grooms probably would not have let him take if they’d known that John had just had been disinherited and was making his escape. 

He left the Reigate estate and the Surrey countryside at his back and rode hard for London.  When he got there, he stabled the horse, pawned some of the jewels for coin and went to call on certain acquaintances of his father’s.  Knowing no better than the grooms, they assumed that it would be to their advantage to assist Baron Sheppard’s son in his plans.  One gave John an introduction to a friend.

“The Queen is sending Francis Drake on an expedition to the Pacific, and he has need of able-bodied seaman.  I don’t suppose you have any experience at sea?  No?  However, you are most certainly... able-bodied.”

John looked back at the man from underneath his lashes and smiled in a way he had learned usually produced favourable results.  The next day, sore but happy, he rode for Plymouth with a letter of introduction to Master Drake in his pocket.

When he returned to London some years later, he would carry a different introduction.

***

John spent the next three years at sea.  For the first few days, he was seasick.  After that, he was frequently cold, wet, starved, parched, sunburnt – and exhilarated.  He was almost never bored.  Thanks to the education his father had paid for, John could read, keep logs in a clear hand, reckon well enough to assist in navigational calculations and handle a sword or pistol.  Lean and agile, he quickly learned to climb the rigging with ease.  Sitting on the top high above the deck with the wind in his hair, John could imagine he was flying.

With the rest of Drake’s fleet, John circumnavigated the globe, learning that the world was both wider and stranger than he had ever imagined back in Surrey.  Returning to England felt not like returning home, but rather like going into exile.  As soon as he could, he shipped out again, his way made smooth by Drake’s letter of recommendation.

As time went by, however, John gained something of a reputation among the shipmasters in Plymouth.  John Sheppard, they said, was a brave fighter who could and would kill at need and a good comrade who’d never leave a man behind.  He was a clever hand aboard as well, but perhaps too clever, too disinclined to take orders readily.  One captain under whom he’d served had said that he could never figure out whether to help Sheppard to a ship of his own or have him flogged half to death.

When tensions with Spain finally broke out into open war, John signed on again under Drake’s command, bringing his reputation with him – and continuing to demonstrate its accuracy.  After Gravelines, it was Drake himself who took John aside, gave him a folded sheet of paper and suggested that he consider a change of career.

The paper proved to be a letter of introduction to Sir Francis Walsingham, Her Majesty’s spymaster.

***

Thus it was that John returned once more to the bustle and brawl of London.  His assigned tasks were intermittent, sometimes bloody, more often requiring merely the collection of information.  His instructions were usually delivered by other agents.  Occasionally he met directly with Sir Francis or, after Walsingham’s death, Sir Robert Cecil.

Once, to John’s great discomfort, he was introduced to the Queen.  Brocaded and be-pearled, white-faced and red-wigged, she looked him up and down with blatant appreciation before extending her hand.  The state of his nerves was such that it took him a moment to realize that she was offering it to him to kiss.  Her Majesty was most amused.    

John’s work left him with time on his hands and a sufficient, although not extravagant, amount of coin to enjoy it.  Standing room in the pit at the Globe Theatre could be had for a penny.  John was one of the crowd that laughed at the bawdy jokes, cheered during the sword fights, whistled at the pretty girls knowing full well they were really pretty boys.  The crowd shivered at the ghosts and witches, watched somberly as heroes travelled their fated paths to death. 

After the performance, a few pennies more would buy rounds of ale for John and his companions of the moment in the taverns.  One fellow would start, then John himself would buy a round, then someone else another...  The moon and the stars lit John’s way from the tavern, sometimes home to the rooms where he slept and kept his few possessions, sometimes but not always alone.  Sometimes his immediate destination was not his own rooms at all.

One memorable evening, as John’s companions were retelling the bawdiest of the jokes from the play they’d seen that day, John heard gentle laughter behind him.  He turned to see Will Shakespeare himself, some years younger than John and a handsome man despite his already receding hairline.  Later that night, sated and sleepy, Will ran his hand through John’s hair.  “How can this be so soft when _this_” – the hand moved to John’s cheek – “is like black wires?”

John had no answer and when he woke in the morning, Will was gone.

***

It was on another memorable evening that John first met Mara.  He was halfway home, the chilly air having more or less cleared his head, when he rounded a corner and literally ran into her.  (Later on she was to tell him she’d been following him, _considering_ him.  Having made up her mind, it was no trouble for her to use her gifts to get ahead of him and stage the apparent collision.)

She laughed as he apologized, hooked her hand around his arm and began to walk even as she chided him for not looking where he was going.  (Later on, he realized it was a bit odd that he’d allowed her to lead them, that he’d never questioned their destination.  But by then it was too late.)  She was silken and sensuous and quite obviously no doxy.  A courtesan perhaps, but never a doxy.

She led him back to rooms she had somewhere in the city.  Later on, he could never remember any details of that night clearly – it was all a swirl of low laughter and soft skin, of perfume and salt and musk, of pleasure rising into need, teased and taunted into desperation until he broke like a bowstring snapping.

Waking alone in the morning with the sunlight coming in through the windows, he’d noticed a mirror standing in corner of the room.  It was dusty and unused, half covered with discarded clothing.  Even as he wondered why a beautiful woman would so shun her mirror, he’d reached out to wipe the dust away – and seen the marks on his throat.

He dressed, left the house, spent the day walking the streets.  The next night, he returned.  He returned because he wanted to and because there was no point in resisting that desire.  He could return on his own, or he could let her find him and lead him back.  Those were his choices.

For a while, she kept him as a pet.  He was not, however, of a pet-like nature.  He reasoned that if he were _like_ her, if he were one of _them_, then she might treat him as an equal.  To this purpose, he cajoled, bargained, whined, pouted.  In the end, his most convincing argument was aesthetic.  She, like the Queen, like other women and men before her, had made no secret that she found his looks appealing.  If she turned him, he proposed, those looks would be hers to enjoy for eternity.  (And to tell the truth, he was vain enough to like the idea for his own reasons.)

Mara capitulated.  One night, a chilly late October night with a full orange moon riding low in the sky, she put her mouth to John’s throat with a different purpose than usual.  She sucked him until he swooned, sucked him almost dry, then pierced the vein in her own wrist and held it to his mouth, urging him to suck in return, to restore himself from her own essence.  Back and forth they went, each turn drawing him deeper into this new way of being.

Before the sun rose the next morning, Mara carried John, unconscious, into the inner room where she herself slept the days away.  She carried him there that he might be safe, for he could no longer bear the sunlight. 

She nursed him through his turning, and when the blood hunger rose in him for the first time, brought him prey to kill.  Weak prey, for he himself was still weak.  Small and helpless prey, with tender skin.

John stared at the sleeping child with dawning horror in his eyes.

“Go ahead,” urged Mara.  “Drink.  You know you need to.”

Even as John tried to protest, he could _smell_ the hot human blood.  He _wanted_ it, couldn’t stop himself from reaching for the small, still body.  He bent his head – and when he would have raised it again, the child’s skin still unbroken, Mara stretched out one white hand and pushed his head back down.

“Drink, John,” she hissed, “_Do it_.”

And he did. 

When he was stronger, she took him to walk the streets at night, taught him how to hunt.  He’d thought – before – that it would be magical.

It was a nightmare.

There were no longer any people in the streets of John’s London, only prey.  Only creatures who smelled of blood, radiated blood-heat, whose heartbeats rang in John’s ears.

He killed a man one night, sucked him dry in an alley and only realized as he was lowering the body to the ground that it was a man he’d drunk ale with a time or two.  Before.  An older man, a soldier, what was his name?  Sonner, Summer, something like that.  Dead now, by John’s hand, to feed John’s hunger.

When he tried to explain to Mara, she mocked him.  “You’ve got you wanted, John.  You’ve got what you _begged_ me for, and oh, didn’t you look pretty begging!”

Then, more gently, beguilingly, “Come, we’ve both fed, we’ll have some time for pleasure now.  You promised, remember?  Mine to enjoy for eternity.”

She smiled, but when he turned away, sickened, the smile turned into a mask of rage.  “What else will you do, John?  Step into the sunlight and die?  Go ahead, if you’re that weak.  If you’re not strong enough to live this life.”

“This isn’t _life_, Mara.”

“Call it what you like,” she shrugged.  “Your hands are as bloody as mine, John.  Your _mouth_ is as bloody.  You _chose_ this.  You have no more choices left.”

John did then what he’d done when his father told him he had no choices.  He turned and walked away, heard Mara spit at the ground in his wake.  He would not see her again for several years, not until the night he killed her. 

John walked the streets alone for the rest of the night.  He was standing by the Thames, watching the dark water, when he felt sunrise coming on.  For a moment, he almost considered...  But no.  He turned away to search out a cellar.  To hide.  And plot his course to the discovery of better choices.

***

Shakespeare would never write a play with vampiric characters.  He’d been dead almost a quarter century now.  Ben Jonson wasn’t bad, but he was no Will Shakespeare, and now Jonson was dead too.  None of the other modern playwrights had made much of an impression on John.

Sometimes John wondered if it were the playwrights who were lacking or he himself.  If he’d lost something in turning, some part of himself that allowed him to escape for awhile in the imaginary world of the theatre.  If he’d spend the rest of eternity living a half-life in which nothing would ever be as bright and warm and _real_ as his memories of his life before.

He’d learned to shrug those thoughts off.  Get dressed, get out.  No matter what was happening on the stage, theatre boxes still made a fine place to meet companions for the night, men and women less rough than one might find in the taverns.  Or he might frequent those streets where the carriages of the wealthy came and went, his walk a slow and inviting saunter, his gaze direct, almost challenging, as he returned the looks that came his way.

There were always those who looked and wanted.  And of these, there was always at least one who approached.

The bargain John offered was, as he saw it, honest enough if never explicitly stated.  An hour or so of pleasure in return for blood.  Only a few mouthfuls, never enough to harm.  Never taken frequently enough to harm.  John had no need to revisit any one companion that often.

There were always plenty more.

He wished sometimes that his companions were less... interchangeable.  That these encounters might mean more to him than a chance to gain needed sustenance.  Maybe that was another part of himself he’d lost.

He shrugged those thoughts off too.

The streets were angry and uneasy these days.  The King and Parliament feuded back and forth.  Some people took one side, some took another.  Most just worried they’d be caught in the middle.

John ignored boring human politics, but he did wonder if there’d be war.  As in, bodies lying on battlefields.  Men who were dying anyway, lives more or less free for the taking.  After leaving Mara, John had never again killed indiscriminately.  He traded pleasure for blood, or when hunger made him more impatient, prowled the streets in search of humans who preyed on other humans, whose death might actually be of some benefit to society.  He bargained endlessly, not so much with his temporary companions as with his own conscience.

Sometimes he wondered how much longer he would still _have_ a conscience.

***

The river wound lazily down towards the lough in the summer night.  On the hillside beyond, the town was dark and still.

“A pretty scene,” said the other vampire, “If it were not for the dead bodies.”

John felt his lips twist in a mirthless grin.  “If there were no bodies, we ourselves would not be here.”  He hadn’t asked the other’s name and would not, as he had no use for it.  The man looked to be no older than John.  This meant nothing, of course.  John caught a sense of great age from the other, but he would not ask about that either.

The carnage of the battle surrounded them, easily two thousand men dead or, in a few remaining cases, close to it.  Even now John could sense shadowy figures drifting across the battlefield, searching out the surviving wounded.  John was not the only vampire who had followed the army to Ireland to feed in its wake.

In his human life, John had fought in raids and sea-battles.  He’d fought for gold and for the defense of his country.  Mainly, he’d fought because his comrades were fighting and he would not fail them.

Now John had no comrades.  He’d thought he knew war, but he had not considered what it would be like to watch, cold and passionless, caring not who won or lost so long as the battles brought him what he needed.

Earlier this night, he had come across a young soldier, bled to death not an hour previously.  A waste, John thought, for he was no carrion crow and the blood of those already dead was useless to him.  Then following that thought, another: that there was time he would have seen the waste, not of his own supper, but of a young man’s life cut off too soon.

Now he stood watching the river, that night’s blood bitter in his mouth.

“This isn’t life,” he muttered.

“No,” said the other, “And yet we persist in living it.”

“_Why?_”

The other was silent a while.  Then: “You are young, among our kind.  I do not know if your Maker...”

“She told me nothing,” snapped John.  Perhaps he’d left before she had a chance.  Perhaps she’d never been going to.  Perhaps she had nothing to tell.  “But I’ve spoken with others, even consulted human scholars...”

“Who know nothing!” the other snarled.  “And if you find one who does know, I charge you to kill him!”

“_Some_ of them know _something_ of vampires,” admitted John.  “But not of...”  He hesitated.

“Potentiae,” said the other, softly.

_Potentiae_.  Potentials.  Magical beings whose blood was so powerful that even a sip – if freely given –    would sate a vampire’s hunger as well as the blood of several humans.  Even more, a vampire allowed daily tastes of a Potential’s blood would become immune to sunlight, freed from darkness and the almost constant need to hunt.  In effect, almost human again, but still retaining a vampire’s powers.

Freely given – that was the crucial point.  Potentials couldn’t be turned and they couldn’t be forced.  Their innate magic would kill any vampire who tried.  Kill that vampire truly, for once and for all. 

Which was not, thought John darkly, necessarily a bad thing.  If he could find a Potential, then at best he’d be free to live.  At worst, he’d be free to die.

_If_. 

*** 

The night reeked of the smoke from the plague fires.  John wondered briefly what the smoke-filled streets looked like by daylight, then shrugged.  It wasn’t his concern.

He’d seen plague before, of course, both when he was human and after he’d been turned.  At least he could no longer die of it, but plague meant that a vampire had to hunt harder to find clean blood.  The taste of plague-tainted blood was nauseating.  John had learned that the hard way back in ’03.  He’d managed to get what he needed then, just as he managed again in the outbreaks of ’25 and ’36.  He’d manage now.

Still, there was something different about the arrival of the plague this time.  It was only five years since the restoration of the Stuart king had re-opened the theatres and the taverns, filled the streets with colour and laughter.  John, who didn’t give a sweet damn about who ruled the country, had been happy to abandon the battlefields and return to seduction.

Then the plague had come.  The theatres were closed again, public gatherings were banned.  Most of those who could afford to had left London for the countryside, leaving behind the poor and the desperate.  It was as if the last five years had been nothing but a brief, sweet tease.

John shook his head to clear it.  He didn’t have time for this.  He needed blood tonight, and he’d find a way to get it.  There were humans in the streets and alleyways around him, he could smell them.  He’d learned to touch their minds, draw his prey to him, make them _want_ what he offered.  It was so very easy, almost too... 

The touch of an elusive presence froze him in mid-step.  It thrummed across his senses like a hand sweeping across the strings of a guitar – and then vanished, as it had every time he’d sensed it in the last few weeks, at unpredictable times in unpredictable parts of the city. 

John thought of signal lanterns, with shutters that could be lifted and then closed again to send a message.  He wondered who was sending this message and to whom.  The presence, in the brief moments he’d sensed it, had felt more human than vampiric – but not quite human, either.  Richer.  Stranger.  _Warmer_. 

Whatever it was, it was gone now.  John resumed his stroll, senses alert for possible prey.  The damn smoke was getting into his hair and clothes.  He _hated_ the current men’s fashions.  He was _not_ going to wear a wig, but that meant he had to keep his hair at least shoulder length, and his hair kept wanting to grow _up_ and _out _and _then_ down instead of just down.  As for the _clothes_ – why did everything have to be so baggy?  At least he still got to flash his calves in hose.  And he was rather fond of his small sword, no fop’s toy but a real weapon, one which he used with both skill and pleasure.    

_There_.  The presence, _again_.  He’d never felt it twice in one place before.  Which meant he might be closer to the source?  John stood quite still, listening to the soundless night – until the sound of harsh coughing broke the silence.  John stalked closer to the noise, instinctively cloaking himself in a haze of misdirection.

“Damn this smoke!  It’s not doing any good, it _never_ does any good, you’d think the idiot physicians would have learned that from the hundreds of plague outbreaks that’ve come before this one, but oh, no, here we all are, choking on smoke again...  Who’s there?  Yes, I can see you, so stop acting as if you think I can’t.”

A man, human enough to look at, of the same apparent age as John himself.  Tall, almost John’s height but broader across the shoulders, suggesting a nice, solid body underneath the requisite coat.  Under other circumstances John would have smiled _that_ smile and canted his hips just _so_ and taken care of his supper for night and a few other things as well.  But the man could see John when he was taking care not to be seen, which an ordinary human shouldn’t have been able to.

John wouldn’t back off, but he’d be cautious.

“Look, if you’re just going to skulk in the shadows, you’d might as well go away and save us both time.”

Fine, he’d at least be more cautious than usual.

“Aha!  There you...  Oh.”

“Oh?” repeated John.  The startled look on the other man’s face was comical.

“You’re, ah, taller than I thought.”  

Taller.  Right, thought John.  He’d already noticed how the other man’s gaze had started on his face and then swept _down_ rather than up.  It certainly wasn’t the top of John’s head that had caught his attention.  Lazily, John reached out to touch the other man’s mind – and slammed into a wall, solid as stone and slick as ice.  What the...  But John recovered quickly, covering his confusion with a small bow.

“John Sheppard, at your service, sir.”

“What?  Oh, introductions.  Meredith Rodney McKay.”

McKay carried no sword, John saw.  “May I escort you somewhere, Mr...”

“Dr.”

“Dr. McKay?  The streets can be dangerous.”

“Please.  I’m not worried about the plague any more than you are.”

Now _that_ was an interesting response.  But John only smiled and replied, “Well enough.  But there are other dangers in the night.”  He held McKay’s eyes with his own as he said it, let his voice wrap around the word “dangers” and draw it out, let McKay have a moment to consider that _some_ types of danger could be... quite enjoyable.

In the uncertain light, John couldn’t tell if McKay flushed or if his eyes darkened.  But the other man straightened his shoulders and stuck his chin out.  “I have rooms some distance away.  Come along, if you care to.”  Without further ado, he turned and walked away.

John stifled a chuckle and followed.

Quite enjoyable indeed.

***

For his own amusement, John attempted to draw McKay out as they walked – and immediately found that this was rather like attempting to persuade water to flow downhill.  A random question about McKay’s lack of a Scottish accent led to the information that McKay’s father had come to London on some sort of business and stayed on after meeting McKay’s mother, the daughter of a Somerset merchant with Welsh connections.  “Meredith” had been a great-uncle with a nasty disposition and a fair amount of wealth.  When his will was read, he also turned out to have been lacking in appreciation for his namesake.  McKay preferred to be called Rodney.

London was McKay’s home “as much as any place,” but he’d been away on the Continent for some unspecified number of years.  Apparently he’d spent this time in the company of various scholars, most of whom he damned as idiots.  Some, however, he allowed to be reasonably intelligent men cursed with an incomprehensible determination to cling to ideas that were wrong, wrong, _wrong_ – even after McKay took the trouble to point out their errors to them.

“..._finally_ got him to understand that circles are just a specific case of ellipses.  But I could never get the message across to him that just because it’s _our_ sun, that doesn’t mean it’s the centre of the universe!”

When McKay finally showed signs of running down, John prompted him again.  “So you returned to England...”

“Just in time for the plague to shut down Cambridge,” replied McKay gloomily.  “Although there’s a fellow in Woolsthorpe I’ve been corresponding with, he’s got some interesting ideas.”

John shrugged.  He had some interesting ideas concerning McKay himself, and they didn’t involve any fellow in Woolsthorpe.  McKay’s not-quite-human-ness challenged John, teasing his senses, taunting his curiosity.  If he’d had any sense at all, he would have given McKay the slip, gone hunting for safer, surer prey.

McKay led them on through the night.  John followed.      

***

“Please excuse the disorder.  My landlady’s been, ah, unavailable,” explained McKay as they climbed the stairs.

Which meant she’d either left London to escape the plague or stayed and died of it, John figured.  He wondered why McKay had stayed.  The other man dressed like a well-off professional of some sort.  His clothes were finely made, although not chosen to show off his best features.  He could obviously have afforded to leave the city.

McKay’s rooms were large, well-appointed – and overwhelmed by piles of books and papers.  The sense of _difference_ McKay emanated was even stronger here, in close quarters, swirled together with the rich, warm scent of McKay’s body.   It made John feel edgy – and alive.  While McKay was lighting the oil lamps, he tried to hide his own nerves by examining one of the piles of books.  He found one he recognized, pulled it out and began to turn the pages, surprised by the warmth of the memories it brought back. 

“_De triangulis omnimodis_,” observed McKay.  John glanced up, startled – and that was different, too, for a human to be able to catch him unawares.  But McKay looked back at John guilelessly.  In the lamplight, John could finally see what colour his eyes were: blue.  Very blue, beneath the receding hairline he didn’t bother to hide with a wig.

“My father wanted me to learn to keep accounts,” John heard himself say.  “My tutor made a bargain with me – for every ten pages of accounting I ploughed through, he let me have ten pages of _De triangulis_.”  Why was he telling McKay this?  It had been decades since he’d even thought of his human youth.

McKay smiled slightly.  “And did you ever keep accounts?”

“No, but after I ran away to sea, Regiomontanus’ triangles proved useful for navigational calculations.”

The smile spread.  McKay’s mouth was crooked.  John wanted to set his finger to the lower side, tug it gently upwards.  Or maybe he’d use his teeth...  

McKay was searching through the books.  “Here, if you haven’t already seen this one, it might interest you.”  He handed John a book and turned away to rummage for something in a cupboard.

_La géometrie__._  By a Frenchman, Descartes.  John vaguely remembered hearing the name, but it had been decades since he’d done any serious mathematical studies.  He began to flip through the book haphazardly, glancing up frequently to study McKay’s broad back.  What _was_ it about the man?  He was not, in the classical sense, the most beautiful man John had ever met, but he was intensely vital, almost radiant with warmth.  John wondered how McKay’s blood would taste.  Then he wondered how the taste would change when McKay was aroused.

“Would you like a drink?”

John almost dropped the book.

“Wine, I mean.”  McKay offered a glass.

Wine.  Yes, of course, wine.  And how had McKay managed to catch him off-balance _again_?

“Or I could make us some chocolate?  Or, oooh, coffee?  Have you had either of those before?  I’ve got beans for both.  And a grinder I designed myself.”

Yes, John had tried both coffee and chocolate.  Since the new chocolate house had opened some years back, he’d picked up a fair number of partners there on winter evenings, when darkness came early.  Did McKay know that some people believed chocolate to be an aphrodisiac?

Did McKay believe that himself?

"Wine will be fine," John said. 

“Here then, sit down.  Oh, wait, chairs, we need chairs.”  McKay grabbed a pile of papers off one chair, balanced it precariously on top of the pile on another chair, then realized that he’d need to clear the second chair as well if they were _both_ to sit down.  And John almost – it would have been so _easy_ to take McKay’s arm right then, to murmur that they didn’t need chairs, not with a bed nearby.  It would have been easy to draw McKay into the next room, strip off his coat and waistcoat, press him down along the length of that bed.  Undo his cravat to expose his pale-skinned neck...

“So are you going to sit down or are you just going to stand there all night?”

John sat, trying to ignore his tingling fangs.

“_Thank_ you.  Now tell me about navigational calculations at sea.”

John blinked.  And then did – or tried to.  He’d hardly gotten started when McKay interrupted.

“No, no, no, there’s an easier way to do that.  If you consider _this_ angle here...” and McKay was drawing angles, lines, curves in the air, hands circling and stooping like hawks until John had to break in and demand pens and paper and ink so that he could diagram his own defense.

“Well, yes, _fine_, that would _work_, but do you understand _why_?”  Damned if John could or _would_ back down from the challenges McKay posed him.  It was almost like... having a friend.  It was almost like being human again. 

***

They’d gone through two bottles of wine and a pot of ink by the time John realized how late it was getting.  Dawn would break in a couple of hours, and he still hadn’t fed.   

“I need to go,” he said as he stood up.

“No, you don’t.”

McKay’s tone was so matter-of-fact that John glanced at him in surprise – and froze.  As the arguments heated up and the levels in the wine bottles dropped, McKay had first shed his coat, then unbuttoned his waistcoat, then loosened his cravat.  Matching him step for step, John had been aware – how could he not be? – of how much closer each discarded layer brought him to McKay’s bare skin and the sweet, hot blood that lay beneath. 

But to see McKay in this moment, all open as he leaned back with his elbows balanced on the arms of his chair, his legs slightly apart and the strong line of his throat completely bare...  John could hardly breathe.  His fangs _ached_.

“You don’t need to go, John.”  McKay reached out.  John stepped forward.  And stepped forward again and sat down, straddling McKay’s lap.  Bent his head to that pale throat, bit delicately down...

One mouthful and he felt as dizzy as the wine should have made him but hadn’t but _this_.  He should have stopped then but he didn’t want to and just one delicious taste more – and then he could hardly bear it, thought he would burst with the tingling energy that raced through his veins. 

“What are you?” he gasped, hearing the words only as he said them.  _What_, not _who_.

“Don’t you know?” asked McKay gently.

And John did know, or at least he could guess, he’d heard the stories but never believed them, they were all...

“Bullshit,” he managed.

“Doubting your own senses?”  And Meredith Rodney McKay smiled that crooked smile of his, blue, blue eyes dancing as he pulled John’s head down to kiss his bloody lips.

John, for the first time in a long time the seduced rather than the seducer, went willingly.

***

“Now I _really_ have to go.  It’s almost dawn, Rodney.”

“You could stay.”

“No, I can’t.  But... I could come back?”

“Please, I’ve barely _begun_ to correct your mathematical misapprehensions.  You _have to_ come back – or not leave.  Uh, I could put you up in the wine cellar?”

John found himself considering it.  He must be insane to consider such an invitation from a man he’d known for less than a day.  He’d be completely vulnerable to anything Rodney might do to him, and _no_, _not_ in a good way, and...

“John, if you know anything about my kind, you must know that you’d be dead – truly dead – by now if I hadn’t wanted you.” 

Rodney’s voice was low, the bite marks on his neck livid.  And yes, John _had_ known the risk, but he’d taken it and survived and, well, that line of reasoning was hardly a deterrent to taking another.  John ended up spending that day in the wine cellar with the ridiculously large pile of pillows and blankets that Rodney insisted were necessary.

Within a week, John’s wardrobe (extensive) and his other possessions (negligible) had come to take up residence in Rodney’s rooms.  (“Seriously, John, just how many almost-identical black waistcoats does one vampire need?”)  The amorphous blanket-and-pillow pile had been replaced by an actual _bed_, disassembled and reassembled by Rodney (“Sleeping on a cold stone floor is just _asking_ for back trouble, and eternal life means back trouble _forever_”) although transported mainly by John. 

Neither of them commented on the fact that a smaller bed, meant for one person only, would have been easier to move.  So far, however, Rodney had persisted in sleeping in his own bed upstairs.  At least John _assumed_ he’d been sleeping.  Rodney was already at work when John woke and came to look for him each evening.  They’d spend the whole night together, walking the smoky streets, arguing mathematics, having sex in Rodney’s lamplit bedroom.  Twice John found himself arguing mathematics _while_ having sex.

Rodney told stories about places he’d been and people he’d worked with.  (“He’d lost it in a duel, so he had a couple of replacements, a copper one for everyday and one made of silver and gold for fancy occasions.”)  John, wanting to offer something in return, hesitantly began to tell bits about his sea voyages and the places they’d taken him.  Rodney listened, questioned, argued – and never asked John anything at all about his life as a vampire.  John’s previous human partners had been almost obsessed with this topic, so John had made a practice of keeping them too busy to talk.  Rodney, on the other hand, never shut up, but never said anything that made John wish he would.

John had never, either as a human or a vampire, known anyone like him.

Which was why one evening when John came upstairs to discover Rodney asleep, he was glad of the chance to escape.  Rodney slept sprawled on his stomach, breathing loudly without actually snoring.  The fine, brown curls of his hair were slightly damp with sweat and well on their way towards tangling into knots.  (“I miss the 16th century,” Rodney had complained once.  John sympathized.)     

John allowed himself only a moment to enjoy the sight before grabbing his coat and taking to the streets.  Two nights before, Rodney had mentioned chess and asked John if he played, which John had admitted he did.  Now he had a gift in mind for Rodney.  He knew a pawnbroker who lived above his shop, who would open up at night for an extra fee – and who, the last time John had been in the shop, had been holding a handsome chess set.

It was less than two hours before John returned, package under his arm, anticipating the look on Rodney’s face.  But as he approached the house, he was startled out of his reverie when he sensed another vampire inside.  Damn, he shouldn’t have left Rodney alone, unprotected.

Damping down his own presence and hoping that the other vampire would be too focused on Rodney to notice him, John slipped in through the front door, left the package in a corner and drew his sword.  Then he began to move quietly up the stairs.  He could make out the conversation now.

“Really, I don’t understand you at all.”  The voice was low and throaty, but definitely feminine.  “He’s pretty enough, I grant you that, but what’s underneath the veneer?  He killed his Maker, you know.  And it’s hardly a century since he was turned – he’s still wet behind the ears.  Before that he was a spy and a common sailor...”

“If you think there’s anything ‘common’ about John Sheppard, madam, you’re even more of an idiot than I took you for.”  That was Rodney, sneering.  Doing a nice job of playing for time, John thought.  But Rodney’s visitor seemed unimpressed.

“Be that as it may, he’s hardly going to be able to hold your interest for any length of time.  You and I, on the other hand, have so much to... discuss.”  That was quite enough of _that_.  John was moving before he thought twice.  He took the remaining stairs two at a time, leapt into the room and lunged for the other vampire.

Who, in a flicker of motion too fast for the eye to follow, was suddenly a yard to the left of where she _had_ been.

She would have been pretty when she was human.  As a vampire, the sweetness of her features didn’t mask the hardness of her eyes.  Almost the same colour as Rodney’s, they made John think of ice rather than summer skies.  Ringlets of blonde hair framed her face, and the fashionable neckline of her gown showed off her attractions to good advantage.

John wanted to rip her throat out.  He was already moving into a reprise when Rodney stepped to his side and curled his hand around John’s biceps.

“The Countess was just leaving, John, so I won’t waste _your_ time by introducing her to you.”  And then to the apparent Countess, “You.  Leaving.  Now.”

She shrugged, appearing nonchalant even though John could sense her disappointment and anger.  “If you change your mind, let me know.  I _might_ still be interested.”

“What part of ‘now’ didn’t you understand?”

The vampire gave Rodney what was almost a bow, spared John the barest of nods and then was gone.

John resheathed his sword, Rodney opened his mouth to say something – and John pushed past him to go back downstairs and retrieve the package.  He need time to calm down, get a grip on his jealousy.  Rodney was _his_, except that saying so bluntly to Rodney’s face suddenly seemed like a really bad idea.  Rodney had just faced down an older, more experienced vampire without even breaking a sweat.  What if John made his declaration – and Rodney _laughed_ at him?

When John re-entered the room, Rodney offered him a glass of wine.  “What’s that?”  He indicated the package.

“It’s a gift.  For you, I mean.”  He felt foolish even saying so.  Rodney would probably hate the set.

But while John took off his baldric and coat, Rodney pulled out a pocketknife and busied himself with the string and wrapping paper.  Then: “Oh!  You got this because we were talking about chess.  You got it – for us?”

“For you, but if you like, you could play with me.”  Rodney gave him a sharp look, so John waggled his eyebrows and smirked back, suddenly feeling much better.

“Very kind of you to offer,” said Rodney replied, fondling a queen.  His tone was dry, but his eyes were intent on John, so John set his wineglass down and went to wrap his arms around all that solid warmth, rub his face in Rodney’s soft hair.

“Thank you, John,” Rodney murmured.

“I wanted to protect you,” John mumbled into Rodney’s hair.  It was easier to talk when he wasn’t looking at Rodney’s face, when Rodney couldn’t see his.  “But you didn’t need my protection, did you?”

“I didn’t need it _this_ time,” corrected Rodney.  “There’ll be other times I will.  And there’ll be times when you – when we need to protect each other.”

And times when you think I’ll need _you_ to protect _me_, thought John, but Rodney hadn’t said that and John certainly wasn’t going to.

“John, what happened this evening was, well, in a way it might be considered to be my fault.  At least partly.  Although it’s not my _fault_ really, more like a failure of foresight, or not even that because I _knew_ this might happen and I _meant_ to take steps to forestall it before now except I just never _did_ because you’re, well, I didn’t know how you’d react to the idea and I wanted to give you time before I sprung it on you, I wanted _us_ to have time although myself, I certainly didn’t need any, pretty much from the first I’ve, you, uh...  Can I bite you?”

Startled, John lifted his head and said the first thing that came into his mind: “With what?”

Then, belatedly, “And why?”

“Well, _you’ve_ made your claim on _me_ clear enough, I’ve got your bite marks all over my neck, not to mention the ones, uh, I’ve got plenty of bite marks.”

Rodney already _knew_ John had claimed him.  And he didn’t sound at all upset about it.  Actually he sounded kind of pleased and he was looking all flushed and ruffled and John could think of lots of places that didn’t have bite marks _yet_.  Except that Rodney was still talking.

“But _I_ haven’t claimed _you_ yet, so other vampires think they still have a chance.  If I had some of your blood in me, they’d be able to sense that and they’d know...”

“They have no chance with you at all,” John’s voice came out lower than he intended – he was fighting to keep from actually growling this statement.  Rodney seemed to hear the growl anyway.  He turned in John’s arms to grin at him.

“No, they don’t.  And although I admit to finding your displays of jealous possessiveness attractive, I think we should take steps to clarify the situation, don’t you?  Hmmm?”

Rodney’s wide, crooked mouth was right there, all John would have to do to kiss him would be to lean down a little.  Rodney’s body was pressed against his, warm and strong and – John shifted his thigh a bit – ah, yes, _ready_.  Ready to be kissed and stroked and licked and bitten and John was fast losing the ability to say no to anything Rodney wanted except there was something, some detail, wait a moment, oh, right, _that_.

“_With what?_” John insisted muzzily.

“I’ll have you know I’m perfectly capable of growing fangs.  Mating fangs.”

“Mating fangs.”

“Yes!  For, uh, mating.  If I want to.  I have to want to strongly enough.”

John thought about it and started to grin.  “So, can I help you with that?”  He emphasized the question with a roll of his hips that made Rodney gasp and sputter.

“John, this is a serious decision, not a roll in the hay!”

“First, we don’t have any hay, so we’re going to use your bed instead.  Second, I already _made_ my decision the first night we spent together.”

“Oh.  That’s...  Actually, that’s...  Wait!  Where are you going?”

“I’m going to help you want, Rodney,” promised John as he unbuttoned his own waistcoat.  He glanced over at Rodney to make sure the other man was watching before he began on his shirt.  Holding Rodney’s gaze, John took his time with the shirt, pausing in his work on the buttons to reach underneath and palm a nipple, stroking lightly.  Then he undid his cravat, tossed it lightly into Rodney’s face and sauntered into the bedroom, shirt still half-open.

Rodney , of course, followed.

Shirt.  Shoes.  Breeches, taking the opportunity to stroke himself as he drew them off.  “No, I don’t want help, Rodney, I want you to sit and watch and _want._” 

Hose, balancing on first one foot and then the other, turned so that Rodney could watch the flex of muscles in his back and legs, guess at the outline of his ass. 

Turning back, John paused with his hand at the waist of his drawers.  Rodney had only managed to get rid of his waistcoat and one shoe and his eyes were a bit glazed, but judging by the impressive tenting of his breeches, he had the _wanting_ thing under control.  Or out of control, as the case might be.  John could _smell_ his arousal, almost _taste_ it.

He got rid of the drawers, advanced on Rodney and started working on _Rodney’s_ shirt buttons. 

Between Rodney’s attempts to help and John’s insistence on attending to each newly revealed bit of skin, it took a while to divest Rodney completely of his clothes.  He finally kicked his drawers off one foot as he pressed John down into the bed, licking at his mouth, kissing his way in.  John chased Rodney’s tongue with his own, chased it right back into Rodney’s mouth.  He was fascinated by the idea of Rodney growing fangs.  Would Rodney’s canines lengthen?  Were they tingling even now?  John gave them an exploratory lick – and, when Rodney’s hips bucked against him, did it again.  And again and again and _again_ as Rodney whimpered, moaned, _mewled_.

“John, John, you have to stop now.  John!  Stop.  Now.  I want, oh, yes, I _want_.  To do this _with intent_, not just bite your tongue by accident.”

But John had already felt them start to grow, more slender than his own, almost delicate but oh, so sharp.  As sharp as Rodney’s mind, as sharp as his clever tongue.  Sharp enough to sink into John’s flesh.  Sharp enough to claim him forever and he wanted that, he was crazy with wanting it, with the mingled scents of Rodney’s body and his own, with Rodney’s heated weight pinning him down.  Crazy, so crazy, _too_ crazy, so he flipped them over to put Rodney beneath him and rubbed his throat wantonly against Rodney’s open mouth.  He’d had human partners do this to him and secretly despised them for it, for being so openly needy.  He hadn’t _known_ then.  Now he did.

The world spun around him and he was on his back again, looking _up_ at Rodney.  Rodney with fangs.  Rodney, _licking_ his own fangs and asking hoarsely, “John, do you want, do you still want?”

And John said yes.  Yes, yes, yes, yes, _oh,_ _yes_ as Rodney’s fangs sank into his throat.

The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> When I first started to think about this fic, I remembered reading that Rodney and John had had a misadventure in Salem ([_Out of Time_](http://melagan.livejournal.com/148636.html)) Not realizing that the boys had played a few tricks with time to get there, I took this mean that John had been turned some time before 1692.
> 
> Unfortunately, what I didn't remember is that in [_Sensual Magic_](http://melagan.livejournal.com/142834.html) John states (twice) that he's been a vampire for two centuries. By the time melagan pointed this out to me, I'd written about a third of the story and become rather attached to the idea of a pre-turned John in Elizabethan England. It just seemed to fit him. (Okay, I probably saw _Shakespeare in Love_ too many times.)
> 
> So have I created an irreconcilable paradox? I don't think so. In [_Out of Time_](http://melagan.livejournal.com/148636.html) instabilities in the time spirals tear John and Rodney apart. John wakes up alone, unable to remember Rodney. It follows logically that either John can't remember the years he spent with Rodney at all or he has to have false memories of spending these years alone. Occam's Razor suggests the former – creating false memories would be too much trouble. John has the vague sense that he's been a vampire for 200 years because he can only _remember_ 200 years.
> 
> If John were to make a list of all the memories he _does_ have, he'd realize there's a considerable gap because he'd have memories of clothing, weaponry, etc from before 1800. However, he's unlikely to make such a list because:  
> 1) Vampires are "shit for keeping records" (as John himself tells Rodney); and  
> 2) Losing Rodney throws John into a depressive episode: "A miserable cold settled into his gut and the dark night felt like bitter frost on his bones. John bent his head in weary despair. This -- this was what it was like to wake up and know you'd lost your soul." John's just not in the frame of mind where he's going to say, wait a moment, something's going on here, I'd better make a list of my memories.
> 
> Rodney _does_ mention that John always knows where he is in time. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that John knows how he got there. In fact, MUPATS (McKay Uncertainty Principle Applied To Sheppard) suggests the opposite. According to MUPATS, the product of the uncertainty in John's location and the uncertainty in his momentum (the product of his mass and his velocity) will always be greater than or equal to a small but non-zero number. Therefore, as the uncertainty in his location approaches zero, the uncertainty in his momentum approaches infinity.
> 
> Since John's mass appears to be pretty much constant (no matter how much he eats), it must be his velocity that's infinitely uncertain. Therefore, the more certain John is as to where he is, the less certain he is as to how he got there or where he's going.


End file.
